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Cited by 38Social Robot Interaction and HRIAI in Service InteractionsVirtual Reality Applications and Impacts

Facing the Artificial: Understanding Affinity, Trustworthiness, and Preference for More Realistic Digital Humans

Open access
Seymour, Mike, Yuan, Lingyao, Dennis, Alan, Riemer, Kai·2020·Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
DOI 10.24251/hicss.2020.574
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Abstract

In recent years, companies have been developing more realistic looking human faces for digital, virtual agents controlled by artificial intelligence (AI). But how do users feel about interacting with such virtual agents? We used a controlled lab experiment to examine users’ perceived trustworthiness, affinity, and preference towards a real human travel agent appearing via video (i.e., Skype) as well as in the form of a very human-realistic avatar; half of the participants were (deceptively) told the avatar was a virtual agent controlled by AI while the other half were told the avatar was controlled by the same human travel agent. Results show that participants rated the video human agent more trustworthy, had more affinity for him, and preferred him to both avatar versions. Users who believed the avatar was a virtual agent controlled by AI reported the same level of affinity, trustworthiness, and preferences towards the agent as those who believed it was controlled by a human. Thus, use of a realistic digital avatar lowered affinity, trustworthiness, and preferences, but how the avatar was controlled (by human or machine) had no effect. The conclusion is that improved visual fidelity alone makes a significant positive difference and that users are not averse to advanced AI simulating human presence, some may even be anticipating such an advanced technology.

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  • A recent study reported that users' perceived trustworthiness and affinity were lower when a realistic digital avatar was used compared with a human being but remained unaffected by knowledge of whether a chatbot was controlled by a person or AI.

    “A recent study reported that users’ perceived trustworthiness and affinity were lower when a realistic digital avatar was used as compared with a human being but remained unaffected by the knowledge of whether a chatbot was controlled by a person or AI [59].”

    From A Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Chatbot (Otis) for Health Anxiety Management: Mixed Methods Pilot Study (2022) · cites this paper as [59]

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  • Although the aforementioned study did not compare human and nonhuman avatars, its findings indicate that appearance makes a significant difference to the user experience.

    “Although the aforementioned study did not compare human and nonhuman avatars, its findings indicate that appearance makes a significant difference to the user experience.”

    From A Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Chatbot (Otis) for Health Anxiety Management: Mixed Methods Pilot Study (2022) · cites this paper as [59]

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4 of the 49 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. R. Lewicki and B. Bunker, Conflict, cooperation and justice, chapter Trust in relationships: a model of trust development and decline, Jossey-Bass, 1995.
  2. M. Meng, T. Cherian, G. Singal and P. Sinha, "Lateralization of face processing in the human brain", Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences (2012), pp. rspb20111784.

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Authors
Seymour, M., Yuan, L., Dennis, A., & Riemer, K.
Affiliations
  • The University of Sydney (AU)
  • Iowa State University (US)
  • Indiana University (US)
ORCID
Venue
Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Publisher
Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Published
2020
ISSN
  • 1530-1605 (ISSN-L)
  • 2572-6862
DOI
10.24251/hicss.2020.574
OpenAlex
W3004689019
Cited by
38
References
49
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 1
FWCI
5.64
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by-nc-nd
Locations
  • Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • Journal of the Association for Information Systems (submittedVersion)
  • ScholarSpace (University of Hawaii at Manoa) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › AI in Service Interactions
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts
Keywords
avatars, virtual agents, artificial intelligence, perceived trustworthiness, visual realism, human-robot interaction, video-based interaction, travel agents

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